Abstract
Traditionally, education used to stress the mainstream culture and consistency, focusing on promoting the competitiveness of our country. In this kind of educational system, the richness and variety of individualities and marginal cultures were not appreciated and multiculturalism had no way to communicate its broad cultural vision. Then, with its emphasis on multicultural education, the Nine-year Consistent Curriculum proclaimed by the Ministry of Education in 1998 showed up as an important turning point. The multicultural curriculum, highlighting the equality of cultural groups, the acceptance of students’ diverse cultural backgrounds and the cross-cultural understanding and learning, will surely become an critical issue in the future educational reform. This article first presents what I observed and experienced in a school with multicultural characteristic in 1999. Second, I investigate the different positions of multiculturalism in the history of educational reforms in Taiwan and analyze the advantages of multicultural curriculum in the Nine-year Consistent Curriculum. Then, some specific suggestions about how to design and teach multicultural curriculum are offered. Finally, I probe into the roles teachers playing in the educational reform and in the development of multicultural curriculum, and suggest the ways to put all these into teaching practice.